Aeliana Malaspina (aeliana) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2009-01-20 12:32:00 |
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Current mood: | scared |
Letter from Aeliana Malaspina to Ercole Malaspina, dated 17 September 1942...
Strongly warded and blood-sealed; no-one but another Malaspina will be able to make sense of it. Written in Italian, Tuscan dialect, in reply to his letter.
Caro Pappa,
I’m sorry it has taken me so long to reply to your letter, but things keep changing so quickly. I am no longer in Pelby College, where Marco was so happy. I am in the Lady’s house and we are not to return to school until things have changed there to her satisfaction; they can demand Charis and Florian of her, but not us. I hope you are getting well.
If you have the chance, please write to Mercutio and tell him to behave himself! He is making a pest of himself. He fights all the time with Don Nicodemo’s daughter Valeria (it is a very long story, but the girl Alessio did not marry was actually Nicodemo’s daughter—that side of the family is quite odd, you know) and is always saying things that make Don Nicodemo angry, even though the Lady forgives him. Marco says he is lucky that he is not beaten, that you would have beaten him once for saying such things. I think soon that he will be beaten, if he does not guard his tongue around the fata.
Valeria has gone to school with Florian to protect him and the others, so we have a little peace, especially since that horrible Jennie Mablin is gone as well. (I can’t believe I was ever her friend.)
When you are well, have you thought about what you will do? I don’t think you should go off and live by yourself, you know. I know you don’t want to come back here but it’s safe here, for you, if you can be good to the Lady and Nico. Everyone here says that you were the one who left, in the thirties, and that was why she couldn’t get Marco and Bella back from your wife, even though she had the papers that said you’d tried to annul that marriage. I know why you wanted to leave, but why would you take Isabella? When you knew what those people were like? The Lady says that you didn’t know they were here, but how could you not, with the Greengrasses here?
I won’t come live with you if you don’t come back here, not unless she throws me out. I don’t want to end up like Isabella, she is always drinking coca-wine and the Lady doesn’t have any idea what to do about that. You are my father and I love you but you have to start thinking of other people, you know! Mercutio is going to be just like you, and I won’t cry for him either.
Also, I think you should know; I’ve heard Mercutio and Bella talking about those damned yellow birds. You brought them here, didn’t you? Because I never saw them when we lived with Zia Lavinia, and they have nothing to do with the Lady! Why would you do that? You’d better tell me, or I’m going to tell the Lady and Don Nicodemo, and then they will probably not let you come back. I’ll be lucky if they let us stay.
Sometimes I don’t think you’re mad at all. I think it’s the Furies. I just wish I knew what you and Fulvio and Mamma and Aunt Veronica did, so we could just pay for it once and for all. Sometimes I think that maybe you don’t know either, that maybe your father or grandfather did it. That is the part that scares me the most of all.
Aeliana Fulvia Malaspina